My Car Caught A Virus Driving Down The Highway?

from the check-engine dept

In the past few months there have been a ton of stories about the threat of mobile viruses. This has a bunch of folks running scared, but if you read the details, most of these "viruses" are very much proof-of-concept and are not likely to spread very fast -- if at all. Of course, there certainly is a potential ongoing risk as phones become more like computers (the downside of being "smart"), and virus writers are getting craftier all the time, but for the most part, there isn't that much to be worried about. However, with all the focus on mobile devices, should we also be concerned about other objects with wireless connections? According to this report, one anti-virus company is claiming that a new mobile virus can infect certain Lexus vehicles from a range of 15 feet. Sounds scary, right? But, if you read the details, it's unclear what's going on at all. The article doesn't make it clear if this actually happened or they're just discussing the "potential" for it to happen. They don't even know what was actually infected or if anything was really infected at all. This seems like a situation where a little more research might prove useful. The story apparently originates from the anti-virus firm's own blog, where they claim that someone has asked them how to cure a virus that was transferred from a phone to certain vehicles -- though, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that this has actually occurred. The post asks if anyone knows what operating system these cars use in their onboard system, and apparently it's a custom built OS -- though, a second comment notes that Lexus does appear to have an "integrated phone system" from Nokia, which could be the source of this issue. Still, if that's the case, it sounds like it would just be a problem if an infected phone was used in this system -- and it seems unlikely that it would cause any additional problems for the system, other than causing problems for the phone itself. Still, with just this scant amount of evidence, that one news source made it sound like your car might be vulnerable to viruses passed on from passing cars. That might lead to one heck of a traffic jam. Forget the check engine light, is your anti-virus dashboard light flashing?

Reader Comments

Help Needed...

kstreetfriend comment:

According to the New York Times: Recently, a number of for-profit colleges have faced inquiries, lawsuits and other actions calling into question the way they inflate enrollment to mislead/increase the value of their parent company’s stock.

In the last year, the Career Education Corporation of Hoffman Estates, Ill., has faced lawsuits, from shareholders and students, contending that, among other things, its colleges have inflated enrollment numbers. The company acknowledged that it was under investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In February 2004, F.B.I. agents raided 10 campuses run by ITT Educational Services of Carmel, Ind., looking for similar problems.

Kaplan is wholly own by the Washington Post Company. I provided the S.E.C., Department of Education, and federal courts information that appears to prove Kaplan inflated the Concord School of Law enrollment, telling investors that the “flagship” of its higher education division has as many as 600 to 1000 or more students.

Why didn’t the Justice Department and S.E.C. included Kaplan with their investigation?

Re: Help Needed...

thuriam

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Services Provided By Thuriam

Thuriam is a technology consultant providing world-class services, Customer interaction in varied application areas and focused on BPO & Knowledge industry. Thuriam assists in the identification and development of business opportunities in the emerging BPO & Knowledge Services markets.Offshore outsourcing of your Business Process is a compelling business strategy. At Thuriam we attempt to identify the possible outsourcing opportunity and present our capability as an integrated Technology and process Outsourcer catering to all your needs. We would be your partner to provide end to end services across the value chain.Our integrated analyses provide industry, competitive, customer and technology innovation along with strategic, tactical, and operational recommendations to help maximize the bottom line from business strategy, service delivery, marketing and sales efforts. We provide high end services by utilizing the latest technologies and at low costs.
Our Services:
Knowledge Services
Medical Backoffice Services
· Medical Transcription
· Medical Billing
· Medical Coding
Legal Consulting Service
· Legal BPO
· Legal Documentation
· Legal Research
Data Research Services
· Data Collection & Extraction
· Database Services
BPO Services
Digitization Services
· Transcription Services
· Media Conversion Services
Data Processing Services
· Form Processing
· Data Entry
Data Conversion Services
· Electronic Publishing
· Prepress Services
· Data Capture
Medical Transcription:
Our endeavor is to constantly re-engineer the dictation/transcription process in order to take full advantage of the latest advances in computers, networking and digital technology. Combining these technologies with competent transcription skills allows us to provide cost-effective solutions to meet your transcription needs. We offer clients a set of core competencies, which are invaluable to the health information management professionals as well as other professionals who must dictate a steady stream of reports and correspondence. We are specialized in the following Reports - Discharge Summary, Death Summary, Progress Notes, Clinical Notes, Emergency Notes, History & Physical, Radiology Consultation Reports, Office Visits, Physician Letters, and Psychiatry Reports etc.
Medical Billing:
In today’s competitive business world medical billing acts as a key in the revenue management of health care industries and hospitals. Medical Billing plays a major part in the income of the respective organization. Any inaccuracies made in pricing, missed charges, errors in coding during manual procedure will turn out as a very huge loss to the organization. Billing process includes patient registration, charge entry, patient statement and enquiries, standard reports and accounts receivable management. Thuriam’s medical billing service enables to eliminate these loses and accurately process your medical billing. more…
Medical Coding:
In today’s business world Medical coding is considered to be a serious business among the health care industries and hospitals. Manual errors while performing this task may create a major problem and huge loss to the organization. Thuriam’s Medical coding consists of combination of numbers and alphabets adhering to different coding standards. These codes help medical insurance and others to understand what was wrong with the patient, whether treatment was necessary and what services were administered. All these coding helps the non-medical staff at the insurance and other health service providers to handle the claims and make payments on predetermined basis. more…
Legal Consulting Service
At Thuriam we have highly dynamic and high growth Off-Shore service delivery space of Legal Consulting and Back Office Services, where most of the initial process delivery opportunities are moving towards commoditization, we have invested significantly in creating a unique Solution Based value proposition.
Our diversified business practice represents a wide range of commercial, industrial and financial enterprises, both publicly and privately held. Thuriam has the following work departments: corporate, employee benefits, health law, intellectual property, private clients, regulation and government affairs, tax and trial. We offer Legal Drafting, Deposition Summary, legal coding, legal billing, paralegal, legal research, to documentation service. more…
Data Harvesting Service
We believe that our Value Proposition framework when tailored to meet our client's specific business and process delivery requirements will further enhance the value we passionately deliver to our customers on consistent basis. We understand just how critical building and maintaining directories and databases is to any business, educational or research organization. Our expertise in data harvesting domain includes Data Capturing Service From The Web, Online data entry and internet search, Catalog / database management, Internet research, email mining and customized list making, Portal management support, e-Newsletters / e-Clippings, Secondary Research / Market Intelligence. more…
Data Conversion Service
Our world leading data conversion capabilities include services such as e-Book Conversion, XML, SGML, HTML, PDF and Tiffs. This apart, Thuriam converts data stored on paper, proprietary file formats and many other formats into the choice of data and medium that you would desire. Worldwide users of our data conversion services include major publishers and manufacturing companies, academic and research libraries colleges and universities, and public utilities.
Many organizations are faced with mountains of non-standard source material created over the years by a variety of organizations and individuals. Their current and future business goals depend on converting this data to a standardized database. Thuriam offers a full range of consulting and data conversion services to help organizations meet this critical need. We not only convert data, we understand your objectives in a broader context. That's why we proactively suggest improvements in database design, and identify simple solutions that add power at little or no cost. We foresee and resolve integration issues, always focusing on improving the ease, reliability, and speed of your database. more…
Digitization Service
At Thuriam, we provide the specialized Digitization with the combination of individual project management capacity and experience by retrieving the contents from videos, books, images, archives, photographs, government records and collections, and any other documents and converting in to comprehensive digital formats for universal access, web delivery uses, copying, and other means of distribution. more…
Data Processing Service
Data Processing is a constraint to be done by all government agencies, institutions, companies, industries, etc. for purposes like purchase requisitions, travel approvals, time off requests, and expense reports. Thuriam initiates Data Processing by receiving the forms from you and create a new database for the information in your forms. Then follows designing of the form structure, quality check and delivery of product. more…
Our Strategy Consulting includes
· Business Strategy & Design
· Market Analysis
· Competitive Intelligence
· Portfolio Development
· Product & Service Innovation
· Blueprints for the future
· Project Management
· Process Development
We are looking forward to the prospect of increasing India's share of the world market in BPO & Knowledge Services outsourcing through the advisory services offered by Thuriam.
To learn more about our service packages, specific to meeting your business objectives, e-mail us at: info@thuriam.com.

No Subject Given

Correct me if I'm wrong, but for Bluetooth-viruses to actually take effect, people have to knowingly accept a download? If that's the case, why would anyone in their right mind be walking (or apparently driving now) down a street and accept a strange/unexpected file?

Re: No Subject Given

That's a good point, but it gets even more problematic as vehicle-to vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication applications (via dedicated-short-range-communication (DSRC) technology) become developed. (more on DSRC here and here) While my research has focused on the privacy implications of DSRC, the threat of viruses being transmitted via these ad-hoc communication networks between cars incrases the need for strong security.